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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24966757">Unstoppable</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/pseuds/kitsunerei88'>kitsunerei88</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>English National Team, Gen, Overcoming Adversity, Professional Quidditch, Quidditch, no beta we die like men</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 11:07:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,270</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24966757</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/pseuds/kitsunerei88</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Katie Bell has only ever wanted one thing—to play Quidditch for England. And old war injuries aren’t going to stop her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Every Woman 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Unstoppable</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts">flipflop_diva</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The notice is over all the clubs across the country. The Chudley Cannons clubhouse is no different—the tryout date, location and time is posted, same as they are anywhere else, though no one seriously expects anyone from the Cannons to try out for a spot on England’s national Quidditch team.</p><p>Katie reads it over twice, then she grabs her playbook and takes notes. England hasn’t played in the Quidditch World Cup for eight years, not since before Voldemort. Before Voldemort, before the War, and before her exercise-induced asthma. St. Mungo’s Healers might have saved her life from the cursed necklace, but there are certain things that, apparently, will never heal. Or, more accurately, Healers have only brought her to a point where they call her condition <em>manageable</em>, and there’s nothing else they’re willing or prepared to do.</p><p>“You don’t understand,” she says, more times than she can count. “I <em>can’t</em> have exercise-induced asthma. I play <em>Quidditch</em>.”</p><p>“You can play Quidditch fine,” the Healers tell her. “As long as you don’t play for more than two hours at a time.”</p><p>A two-hour limit is a problem in professional Quidditch. If Katie weren’t as good of a player as she is, she wouldn’t even have been signed by a professional team. As it is, she’s only playing with the Chudley Cannons—a team that hasn’t won a League victory since 1892.</p><p>They haven’t won in the two years she’s been signed to them, either. Katie is only one Chaser, and Chasers rely on teamwork to score goals. Under her, the Cannons have scored more in two years than they have in a decade, but it still isn’t enough for a win. They’ll get on a roll, and then two hours will be gone. Then, Katie is grounded, and she watches, gritting her teeth, as the gains that they make vanish.</p><p>Tryouts for England’s national team are open. Alicia will be there, and Angelina. Ginny Weasley will be there. Adrian Pucey and Cassius Warrington, her former Slytherin opponents now playing with Pride of Portree and the Falmouth Falcons respectively, will be there. Tamsin Appleby will be there; she also hears that Roger Davies and Jeremy Stretton will be making a run at the national team. And that doesn’t even include the dozens of other professional Quidditch players, famous Chasers who have been on circuit for years, that will be trying out. It’s been eight years since national team tryouts were last held—eight years, and Quidditch careers are short. Eight years, and it’s an open field with most of the old team retired.</p><p>There are five Chaser slots. Only five—three main Chasers, two reserve. And Katie might be restricted from playing for more than two hours, but she is a damn good Chaser, and she has never wanted anything more.</p>
<hr/><p>The first day of tryouts dawns—literally. They’re expected on the field by six in the morning, and judging from the faces of everyone around her, Katie is sure that every one of them is well used to waking up before dawn. They’re awake, alert, all of them carrying brooms in their hands.</p><p>Some of them are chatty—Alicia and Angelina, beside her, are having an involved, determinedly cheerful conversation about their competition. Katie is only listening with one ear, because she knows that she doesn’t rank very highly in the analysis, and she doesn’t want to hear it. When she flies too fast, or too long, she starts having trouble breathing within the first twenty minutes. If she doesn’t slow down, she’ll start coughing and wheezing. If she keeps going, eventually, she’ll pass out. Push herself too hard, as she is wont to do, and she’ll risk lung damage.</p><p>Or—more lung damage that she already has, anyway.</p><p>If she makes the team, she doesn’t think she’ll care. No—she knows she won’t care. It’ll have been worth it.</p><p>At exactly six in the morning, Colin Aldershot, the head of the selection committee, walks onto the field. He is deceptively unassuming—his shoulders aren’t as broad as Katie had always expected of the famous once-Keeper and team manager, and his dark hair is peppered in grey. Still, his blue eyes are clear and sharp.</p><p>“Good morning,” he says, looking around at the group. Not just Chasers, here—Katie cares most about the Chasers, but she sees Oliver Wood standing with a cluster of Keepers on the other end of the field, and she recognizes Lucian Bole standing with the Beaters and Geoffrey Summersby with the Seekers. This is everyone who wants to try for England’s national team, everyone who thinks they have a reasonable shot at one of the prestigious slots. She wonders, offhand, exactly how audacious she is being by even showing up.</p><p>“I am impressed at your courage in trying out,” Aldershot continues after a brief pause. He begins to pace a line on the grounds. “As you all know, this is England’s first national Quidditch team since the War. Many of your faces are new—many of our old standbys are retired. It’s a time for new blood, and we’ve developed a complete and thorough training regimen as part of the tryout process.”</p><p>He pulled out his wand, flicking it, and a tall stack of packages floats out of the stands, thin booklets that still seem longer than any tryout process should be. Alicia grabs three off the stack as it passes by, handing one to Katie, and she flips it open immediately.</p><p>“There will be four components to the training and try-out process. Most of you are signed with a professional team, but you are expected to keep up with these regimens alongside your usual training. We will be keeping track of your professional season this year, but you are each also expected to attend a training weekend every month where we will be assessing your skills and abilities firsthand. Outside of Quidditch itself, you will be handing in monthly reflection pieces on your experiences in Quidditch and an analysis of the plays of a past professional Quidditch game. Whether or not you make the team will be a combined assessment of all four factors, so we suggest that you don’t slack on any of them.”</p><p>“Essays?” Angelina mutters, and Katie can hear the horror underlying her tone. Angelina has always hated essays—she’s better with action than she is with words, and even through the year she spent as Quidditch Captain, she preferred to draw her plays instead of analysing them. “I—no.”</p><p>“Professional Quidditch season,” Katie murmurs in response, knowing that, without tryouts even having started, she is behind the game. Her medical limitation is one thing, but the Cannons haven’t won a game in years—how can she possibly impress in the season? “At least you can write an essay, Ange.”</p><p>“Don’t give up before you’ve even started,” Alicia whispers fiercely, slapping Angelina on the shoulder and reaching over to punch Katie on the arm. “We’ll work together—no better Chaser team than us at Hogwarts, right?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Angelina says, recovering her resolve. “I’ll plan our plays. We’ll impress on the training days, don’t you worry. No Chaser team will fly better than we will.”</p><p>“I’ll edit the reflection essays,” Katie replies, taking a deep breath because she still can. “I had the best marks at school, You-Know-Who or no You-Know-Who.”</p><p>“And I’ll work the Healers.” Alicia smiles, nervous, but there’s the steel of determination behind it, too. “And if that doesn’t work, how do you feel about Muggle medicine?”</p>
<hr/><p>The Chudley Cannons are still a disaster. Two years after signing, and they still can’t win a game. Katie scores an average of fifty points a game, which is at least on par with anyone else on the professional Quidditch circuit, if not better. When she walks off the field, wheezing and coughing, they’re never anything less than twenty points up, but her gains disappear in no less than fifteen minutes. Her professional season is, as it always is, a complete and utter disaster.</p><p>Angelina keeps her promise. Katie can’t tell, but she thinks that they make an impression on the selection committee on training weekends. When the three of them are on the field, they read each others’ minds, working as a seamless, effortless team and sinking repeated goals past every single one of the Keeper candidates—Wood included. Better yet, Alicia and Angelina cover for her when she needs to slow down, just a little, to catch her breath. None of the other groups are anywhere near as good, but then, none of the other have played together nearly so much.</p><p>When Katie is on the field with other Chasers, it’s harder. Adrian Pucey and Tamsin Appleby are surprisingly easy to work with—when they talk, their former House affiliations are water under the bridge, and it’s all Quidditch. Adrian is utterly convinced that adaptability with all players will make him a better pick, while Katie thinks that Tamsin is just naturally easygoing. Warrington is solid, but he’s slow, and if he weren’t so easy to read Katie thinks she would have a much harder time working with him. By contrast, Davies is a nightmare—he tries to keep the selection committee’s attention on him at all costs and hogs the Quaffle. Adrian thinks he’s going down in flames, since he isn’t showing any teamwork or any passing ability. Before long, Angelina has a chart of each candidate’s strengths, weaknesses, and how best to show off while working with them.</p><p>Or, more accurately, Adrian does, and he shares it with them for the low, low price of having his reflection essays edited as well. There are five slots on the national team, Adrian says, enough room for all four of them.</p><p>Four essays a month is a lot to revise, but Katie does it. Long pieces on why they each want to be on the national team the first month, then one on their own perceived strengths, and a third on their weaknesses and how they are working to address them. A fourth essay on the meaning of teamwork, and a fifth one on good sportsmanship. A sixth essay on the value of training partners, which Katie is pretty sure is almost the same thing as the fourth essay, then a seventh essay on the value of having strong opponents. By essay eight, on the value of perseverance and hard work, Katie is sure that the selection committee is running out of essay topics to assign, and she wants to stab her eyes out. The analysis of past plays is easier, if only because the topics aren’t so esoteric. Katie is grateful that she isn’t reviewing these ones, because the esoteric ones are killing her.</p><p>It’s exhausting—absolutely, endlessly exhausting. Katie has never been so tired in her entire life. Even Wood’s Quidditch regimen wasn’t so exhausting, and neither was anything thrown at her by the Cannons. Before six months are up, half of the field has failed to hand in at least one assignment or has missed at least one training practice. The selection committee never comments, but Katie can’t help but wonder whether they’re silently taking notes. Or, whether the essays and analyses are just meaningless make-work, and they’ll just be picking the best season players anyway.</p><p>Alicia swings two specialist Healer appointments for her, but neither of them tell her anything she hasn’t heard before. Exercise-induced asthma is a common ailment, they tell her, and she just has to live with it. Her body will tell her when she needs to stop, and she should listen.</p><p>So, Alicia sends her out to the Muggle world, to a Muggle specialist in asthma, and Katie fibs about being a professional football player and walks out with an exercise warm-up and cool-down regimen and a prescription for an <em>inhaler</em>. And, remarkably—</p><p>It works.</p><p>She wakes up an hour before any of the other candidates for Chaser, and she’s on the field forty minutes before anyone else, running through a series of exercises developed to help her breathe. Just before she flies, she sucks in a mouthful of the strange Muggle inhaler and swallows, and the coughing, the wheezing, doesn’t start for at least an hour. She’s in the air longer and longer, and even when she has a full-blown attack, she often just needs one shot of the inhaler before her symptoms disappear and she can go back in the air.</p><p>It works. It works, and if Katie could feel hope, then she would.</p><p>As it is, she’s too tired, and she needs to sleep so she can wake up and do it all over again. Because she will—she’s never wanted anything so much as to play for England, and she grits her teeth and keeps moving forward.</p>
<hr/><p>Ten months. Ten months of essays, and play analyses, and extra practices. Ten months of worrying, and in the few minutes that she isn’t worried, bone-deep exhaustion instead. Katie isn’t alone—everyone who is still here, in the extended tryout period, wears a similar expression.</p><p>There are rumours about who will be picked, of course. Ginny Weasley, on the Holyhead Harpies, has had a stunning season culminating in a League win, but she’s missed writing five essays and three analyses, and one training weekend. Appleby has had a solid season, handed in all the analyses, but missed one weekend sick and one essay. Roger Davies had a decent season, made all the training weekends, handed in all his essays and his analyses, but he can’t seem to work with anyone on the field; Stretton, too, finishes all the work but suffers from the worst case of inconsistency that Katie has ever seen. He’s either in top form and amazing, or he’s awful, and never in-between. In her own group, the only variances are their season successes: Katie and the Cannons finish dead last, while Adrian, on Pride of Portree, makes the League semi-finals.</p><p>The team will be announced, not in person, but by a post on the board on the Quidditch pitch at exactly nine in the morning the day after the last training seminar. Most of the players have spent the night partying, figuring that whatever the end result, at least the year from hell is over. Katie herself had made a brief appearance, accepting a glass of champagne, but she hadn’t stayed—she had just been too tired, too nervous, to be in the frame of mind for a party.</p><p>The tension on the field is palpable. Katie’s eyes dart around the crowd of Chasers, running the math almost against her will. Ginny Weasley is brilliant, and the national team would be idiots not to take her. Adrian’s had a strong season, and he’s gone out of his way to demonstrate his adaptability. Stretton, when he can get past his performance anxiety, is probably their best flier; Davies’ inability to work with others will probably sink his chances. Katie never seems to score very well compared to the others—she’s good, and she, Angelina and Alicia show the best teamwork of any three Chasers on the field, but she’s no standout. She’s finished last in the season again, and she has exercise-induced asthma.</p><p>The board in the centre of the field has a piece of parchment on it, but the crowd of candidates is too thick—she can’t force her way through. Reaching up on the tips of her toes, she can just see a slight shimmer around the parchment, the sign of an obscuring spell. It’s almost certainly set to disappear at nine exactly.</p><p>“It’s almost time, isn’t it?” Alicia asks, slipping behind her and grabbing her hand. “One of us should fly in, get a closer look.”</p><p>“Already tried,” Angelina says, melting out of the crowd. “No suck luck. Brooms veer off before we can get close.”</p><p>“You tried?” Alicia looked over in interest.</p><p>“Nah, Adrian tried four times, the last time it threw him off and sent him into the stands.”</p><p>Katie sighed, looking down at her watch. 8:58am. “Two minutes.”</p><p>“The results won’t change, so racing over there won’t make a difference anyway,” Adrian grumbles, joining them with his hair mussed, a bruise on his cheek, and his broom in hand.</p><p>“Says the one who tried to camp in a spot closer to the board in mid-air.” Angelina rolls her eyes.</p><p>Adrian shrugs diffidently. “I have no shame, and I admit it.”</p><p>“Look!” Alicia gasps, and Katie whips her head around to see the surge of people rushing forward to the parchment pinned on the board, so many feet away. Her heart races, her breath catches—she wants to race forward too, but Adrian is right. The results won’t change, so there’s no point to racing forwards to see her fate, but by god she wants to.</p><p>There are tears—most of the people are leaving with anger, or tears, or in a few cases, resignation. A flash of red, and Katie sees Ginny Weasley shaking her head wryly before walking off the pitch; Oliver Wood, by contrast, has let out a loud whoop. Lucian Bole wears a tight smile as he nods to a few of the other Beaters, and Roger Davies is stomping off the field in high dudgeon.</p><p>“No surprise there,” Adrian mutters, his face wrinkled in distaste. “Come on, people will move quickly—how long can it take to see whether your name is there or not?”</p><p>Katie shakes her head, but she follows him into the crowd. The sound of people’s mutters follow them as they cross the field, worming their way forwards, and Katie’s stomach is a tight knot of anxiety.</p><p>Right now, she doesn’t know. Right now, before she looks at the sheet, she can still dream that she might still play for England. Once she looks at it, it’ll be over. As she gets closer, she looks down, still being pushed forward by her friends—she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t know if she wants to know. Katie has never scored well in the analysis, and she doesn’t want the crushing disappointment, not yet.</p><p>Not yet.</p><p>“Yes!” she hears Adrian hiss, and then the sound of a slap on the back.</p><p>“Guess I’ll need to put up with your shamelessness for awhile longer,” Angelina says, a breath of laughter in her voice.</p><p>“Teamwork sells,” Adrian replies. “And reserve Chaser isn’t so bad, is it?”</p><p>“Not bad at all,” Alicia says, sounding in equal parts relieved and excited. “Chasers get switched out of games all the time—we’ll both see play, right, Katie?”</p><p>Katie looks up, confused. “Both?”</p><p>“You should look at the results.” Adrian is smiling, and he points at the parchment on the board. Katie looks up, stunned—and there is her name.</p><p>It’s not under the main team—that goes to Adrian, Angelina, and Tamsin Appleby. But it’s there, listed as a reserve with Alicia, and her breath catches as she skims the rest of the list. Lucian Bole is on as Beater with Anthony Rickett, Indira Choudry as reserve; Merwyn Finwick has won the spot as Keeper, with Oliver Wood as reserve. Gregory Cotton and Geoffrey Summersby are listed as primary and reserve Seeker, respectively. But her eyes glide back to her own name, <em>Katie Bell</em>, under the Chasers.</p><p>“You made it,” Alicia whispers in her ear, draping one arm over her shoulders, as Angelina does the same on the other side. “Look—you made it!”</p><p>“We all made it,” Katie whispers back, and her eyes fill with tears as she begins to cry.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So, as an interesting note, a lot of my own experience trying out for a national team (for a tiny martial art called naginata) made it into this work. Our try-out process was a year long, and it also included the reflection essays, the video review analyses, a personal training regimen that we had to report on, our tournament scores, and attendance at monthly training camps that were held all around the country. When I think back, I mostly remember a bizarre mix of how badly I wanted to make the team, mixed with this awful exhaustion that is next to impossible to describe. I was tired all the time, and the pressure to perform was so heavy, and there definitely came a point where I didn't actually hope anymore because I didn't have any energy for hoping. It was... very strange. And tiring! And an Experience, which I suppose is why I made Katie live it. </p><p>There's a small part of me now that deeply wants to flesh this out and turn it into a Katie Bell/Adrian Pucey slowburn longfic about the 424th Quidditch World Series so that I can continue writing about the pressure of high-stakes sports, competitive camaraderie, the weirdness of long trips with your teammates, and sports culture. But that, unfortunately, requires much more plotting (and I'm not sure who would even read that).</p><p>Thanks for giving me the opportunity to write this! I really enjoyed writing, and I really hope you enjoyed!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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